The Journey Is Only Beginning
by LavenderAndTime
Summary: What if the Tenth Doctor fully regenerated into the Eleventh in The Stolen Earth/Journey's End? An AU re-imagining of the series four finale, with a few surprises (and time-wimeyness) along the way. [Warning: Character death]
1. Regeneration

AN- Just to let you know, I have _not_ abandoned this story. As of 9/30/15, I am beginning to re-edit previous chapters. So far I am on chapter 2. Once I have reached where I left off, I will begin to write new chapters. Thank you! :)

~LavenderAndTime

* * *

_Chapter One  
Regeneration_

The very atmosphere in the TARDIS was taut with uncertainty.

The Doctor writhed in pain on the metal grating, requiring both Rose _and_ Donna to hold him down so he wouldn't injure himself further. Then again, even if he were to cause further damage by thrashing around, it would do little to increase the futility of the situation. Jack knew his friend was dying, and he knew the others were aware as well. For once, genuine fear brimmed in that man's glossed eyes. Despite his alien physiology, the humanity he carried with him was bubbling to the surface.

That Doctor, that beautiful man... he didn't want to die.

"What's going on?" Donna shouted, as Jack pulled her away from their friend.

"I told you, he's dying."

"Well, we can't just stand here!" she cried, her eyes wet. "We need to do something! We need to _help_ him!"

She started to rush back to his side, but Jack caught her by the arm. It wouldn't be safe. While he desperately wanted to help— the Doctor's stertorous breaths were becoming increasingly painful to listen to— he saw a faint glow lingering in his veins.

"No, we need to stay back!" he told her. "Rose, you too! Get back!"

Rose Tyler crouched by the Time Lord's side, attempting to mop the sweat off his brow with her hand. Her Doctor looked into her eyes with nothing short of terror. Tears blurred her vision, and her hands shook. This couldn't be happening again!

"Please don't die," she pleaded. "Not now! Not when I just found you!"

"I- Rose," he wheezed. "I- I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I can't stop it. I'm going to..." He paused, a sudden expression of panic crossing his face. "Jack," he said frantically.

He didn't say anything else, but Jack understood. The Doctor was about to regenerate, and wanted him to make sure Rose was at a safe distance.

"Here we go," Jack said, and dashed forward to pull Rose away from the Doctor. "Good luck, Doctor."

"Will someone _please_ tell me what is going on?" Donna begged, as the Doctor exerted every last ounce of energy left to pull himself up to his feet.

"When he's dying, his... er, his body, it repairs itself," Rose explained tearfully. "It changes. But you can't!"

The Doctor clutched to the side of the console, breathing heavily. "I'm sorry, it's too late," he said. "I'm regenerating!"

Then, he stepped away from the console and a violent golden energy exploded from his head and hands. Instinctively, Jack and the two women turned away. His arms tightened around their shoulders, holding them close. He somewhat wished he could cover his ears to dampen the whistling roar of regeneration, but he couldn't, at least not holding Rose and Donna. It took a few moments, but curiosity finally got the better of him, and Jack squinted so he could watch the regeneration. After all, this process was something that had dissolved into legend. Few had _ever_ witnessed this.

He could see his friend's face, almost completely obscured under the glowing energy. His mouth was contorted into a grimace, and his eyes were screwed shut. Before Jack knew what was happening, the Doctor forced his outstretched hands together, and bent over to aim the regenerative energy at the receptacle that held his severed hand. The energy bursting from his hands and head began to grow thin— as if the energy were running out— but at the last moment he let out a shout of surprise and was knocked backwards by an unknown force.

Jack watched the moment his features morphed into another's, and to his surprise it happened as quick as a snap of the fingers.

The new man stumbled backwards, almost colliding into a pillar. He was wide-eyed and youthful, with somewhat shaggy brown hair that almost fell like a curtain in front of his eyes. He looked down at his body in shock.

"Doctor...?" Rose asked hesitantly, and stepped forward a bit.

"Legs! I've still got legs! Good!" he proclaimed, not yet aware of everyone else's presence in the TARDIS. As he gazed at his feet, still gasping for breath, his thin brows furrowed in thought. "Could've been worse, I suppose," he muttered to himself.

"Oh... my... _god_!" Donna exclaimed then, almost causing him to jump in surprise. "Just when I thought I knew everything about you, you go and change your face!"

"It's called regeneration," Jack offered weakly, feeling like even he was in a state of shock. He always knew what regeneration entailed, but never imagined actually watching it firsthand. It was nothing like he thought it'd be.

The Doctor vaguely realized what _must_ have happened, but his expression contorted into one of horror as his confused neurons finally put everything together. He'd regenerated. He'd meant to avoid that; that was why he tried to siphon excess energy to his severed hand! Apparently, his efforts came too late.

Without a moment of warning he hit himself on the forehead with his palm, startling his friends. "Oh, Rose! Jack, Donna! Blimey, no, no, no, no, no! This is all a-" he massaged his temples wearily- "...a huge mistake. This wasn't supposed to happen! But, there's something else, something important..."

They all stared at him blankly, waiting for him to finish.

"Am I ginger?"


	2. Not Ginger

_Chapter Two  
Not Ginger_

Donna Noble was slack-jawed.

"You're kidding me. You just transformed into a completely different person, and that's the first thing you ask?"

Rose stared at him for a moment, finding it hard in her state of shock to even form coherent sentences. "N-no- sorry," she finally managed. "It's still all sort of... brown."

The Doctor appeared heartbroken at this, his brow already fallen. "Really_?_ I'm not even a bit auburn?" he protested.

"No. If anything, it's gotten darker."

He grimaced and flicked his hand in the air, as if swatting away this news of disappointment. "Well, that's rubbish. I've had brown hair for centuries now."

"Doctor," Donna began slowly, chewing her words, "_why_ exactly do you want to be ginger, anyways?"

He spun towards her, a gleeful grin spread across his boyish face. "Because gingers are so _cool_," he enthused. "It's the rarest hair color in the universe, only occurring naturally in about 2 percent of hair-covered creatures when they hold two recessive genes for the MC1R protein on the sixteenth chromosome, one from each parent."

Donna blinked at him. She still didn't know what to make of this entire situation. It was all so _weird_. Sure, she'd seen a human turn into an Ood before, but that was different; she didn't know the man. And she supposed there would always be things that she didn't know about the Doctor, him being alien, and all. One thing remained as a constant, however: he still talked nonsense at near impossible speeds. After a brief moment of reflection, she gathered her thoughts to form a reply.

"Then why don't you dye your hair _ginger, _you dumbo?"

Jack couldn't help himself, and sniggered. Donna had a point, and one that was made even funnier by the fact that her insult seemed to soar right over the Doctor's head.

"I thought about that once, but I couldn't," he said seriously, his hand balled up in thought at his chin. "It felt like cheating."

"_Doctor," _Jack interrupted his mindless chitter-chatter. "You said earlier that this wasn't supposed to happen? What'd you mean?"

His smile quickly faded, dragging most— if not all— of his post regenerative insanity with it. He almost seemed somber now as he slumped into the jump seat.

"I was trying to stop the energy from going all the way," he said quietly, wearily rubbing his forehead. "I thought if I could use just enough energy to heal myself, I could siphon the rest off into my severed hand, and then, with a pinch of luck, maybe I wouldn't change. Guess I was too late."

Rose stood back by one of the pillars, arms crossed over her jacket, staring holes into the metal grating she used to walk on every day of her life. Those happy days seemed a lifetime away now. She'd crossed into dozens of universes in hopes of reuniting with the Doctor, and the moment she found the right one, everything she knew and loved had come and gone. Everything felt different, and she felt like time had abandoned her. Even now, the minutes still passed just beyond her grasp.

Then, the glass and metal container that sat by the console grabbed her attention. A limp hand was suspended inside, cocooned by a bubbly liquid that was still glowing with the regenerative energy he'd poured into it. There was almost an aura of gold surrounding it. Ignoring the glowing aura, though, the hand seemed hauntingly familiar, like one she'd held many times before...

Her eyes widened slightly. "Is that your-"

"My severed hand, from the sword fight on Christmas Day?" the Doctor completed. Rose nodded hesitantly. "That's the one."

Her heart dropped. In theory, this meant it was the very last evidence of _her_ Doctor's existence.

At that moment, all of the lights in the TARDIS switched off with a dull hum. The Doctor glanced at the time rotor, and seeing it unpowered as well, rocketed out of the jump seat.

"No no no noooo...!" he shouted as he dashed about the console, yanking levers and pushing buttons. Nothing seemed to work anymore. "It's the Daleks! They've found us, and shut off all our systems, like a sort of chronon loop."

"Well, what can we do?" Donna asked frantically. The entire TARDIS jolted as she said this. Everyone reached for the first pole or pillar they could find to hang on. The ship rocked for a few seconds before leveling out. Jack let out a breath of relief. Meanwhile, the Doctor seemed a bit dazed after this, having to blink to keep his eyes focused.

Jack leaned back on one of the pillars, and looked at his Time Lord friend. "What do you suggest, Doctor?"

Inside, he couldn't help but beam at the fact that everyone trusted he was still the Doctor. It was a comfort, after the last time. "Well," he began hesitantly, flicking a long strand of hair out of his eyes, "if the Daleks are transporting us somewhere, then we can't decline their invitation, can we? All we can do is figure out _where_ they're taking us."

"There's a massive Dalek ship at the centre of the planets," Jack told him. "They're calling it the Crucible. Guess that's our destination."

"Now... You said these planets were like an engine, at the Shadow Proclamation," Donna mentioned slowly, as if he might not remember saying what she was taking about. "But what for?"

The Doctor looked to Rose, then. She looked ashen, and stood towards the edge of the group with her muscles clenched tight. The shadows below her eyes appeared more pronounced than usual, and her irises were wet.

"Rose?" he asked gently, taking a few steps towards her. "Can you tell us what it was like in Pete's World? It's set a few years beyond ours. What's out there?"

She swallowed, and after a brief pause, spoke. "It's the darkness."

"The stars were going out," Donna added.

"One by one," Rose continued, her shaky voice strengthening. "We looked up at the sky and they were just dying. Basically, we've been building this travel machine, this... dimension cannon, so I- I could come back. Anyway, suddenly, it started to work and the dimensions started to collapse. Not just in our world, not just in yours, but the _whole_ of reality! Even the Void was dead. Something is destroying _everything_."

Donna crossed her arms to shield herself from the chill. It was becoming increasingly cold in the TARDIS, with no systems online. "In that parallel world, you said something about me."

"The dimension cannon could measure timelines, and it's- it's weird, Donna, but they all seemed to converge on you."

"But why me? I mean, what have I ever done? I'm a _temp_ from _Chiswick!"_

The scanner started to beep. The sound cut through the silence of the ship like a sharp cleaver. It was an uncomfortable silence. The Doctor never stopped to notice how soothing the hum of the TARDIS was until it stopped.

He pulled himself from the jump seat and to the console, and it took a little more physical effort than he thought it would. On the monitor, a blinking red dot appeared inside the outline of a ship. "I guess we're gonna have a... a meeting with t-the Da-"

He wasn't able to finish his sentence before his words caught in his throat and he almost fainted with exhaustion. Wearily, he stumbled backwards into the jump seat, all three friends rushing to help him. He arched his back into the sturdy cushion, and with much irritation coughed up a large handful of regenerative energy. It floated towards the ceiling of the time ship in swirling, dainty tendrils.

"I can't go out there," he realized suddenly, staring at the energy that had poured out of his mouth with wide eyes.

"Why not?"

"Because if they got their hands on me in the state I'm in right now, they'd have disastrous power! Rose, it's like the pilot fish. You can't let them find me in here. I'll try to shield myself, but that's no guarantee t-that..."

The Doctor's words caught in his throat again. His friends called out for him- a welcome occurrence, as at least he had something familiar to count on. Regenerating into a new body with new thought processes and new quirks was difficult on a normal day, and it was more difficult now than ever. It felt like even this brand new body was giving up on him. But as one of his hearts stopped, and he felt himself slowly slipping into unconsciousness, he subtly realized there was one voice he didn't hear calling.

He didn't hear Rose.


	3. All Hail the Daleks

_Chapter Three  
All Hail the Daleks_

"You can't let them find me in here," the Doctor urged. "I'll try to shield myself, but that's no guarantee t-that..."

He stuttered in mid-sentence, unable to speak. His mouth bobbed ajar, but his eyes were widely unfocused, and his breaths were labored. Instantly, Rose knew what was happening, and it terrified her. It was just like the last time. Something had gone wrong with his regeneration, at the worst possible moment in their lives: when the entire universe was at stake.

"Doctor? Doctor!" Jack said, gently shaking his shoulder. "Try to stay awake! Fight it!

"What's wrong with him? What happened?" Donna asked frantically, hovering over his other shoulder.

"He poured nearly half of his regeneration energy into his hand, I'm sure that's bound to have an effect," Jack said, thinking out loud.

The Doctor wildly searched the console room one last time as he gasped for breath. His failing body had tossed him into a helpless, vulnerable state, where his soul was laid bare for all to see. The glassy, distant look in his eyes spoke volumes. For once in his life, the Time Lord was completely terrified. His chest rose and fell a few more times before he fell unconscious. His head lolled back, causing that long strand of hair to flip away from his face.

Donna went completely pale.

"Doctor?" she whispered, her voice shaking. There was no response. Tears built up at the corners of her eyes, glistening like wet diamonds. She rested her head on his chest, and to her horror only heard one heart beating. "Oh god, no..."

"Is he alive?" Jack asked, crossing towards her.

She looked up. "One heart is beating. _Only _one."

"Hold on... You were with the Doctor the last time he regenerated, you've got the most firsthand experience out of all of us," the former time agent pointed out suddenly, nodding towards Rose. "Know 'bout anything that might help him now?"

"The last time he changed, he was burning with a fever for hours," Rose said. "Even if there _is_ somethin' we can do, we simply don't have the time."

The TARDIS became eerily silent with that grim revelation. The trio stared at each other with drawn faces, because after all of the wonderful, frightening, and inspiring sights they had seen, traveling through the stars, nobody wanted to admit the truth that was looming over them like the darkening horizon. The Doctor's life was in grave danger, and right now, there wasn't anything they could do to help him.

"Well, time or not, we should make our move quickly," Jack said, breaking the uncomfortable silence. "We either have to escape, or step out there. Rose, do you still have your dimension jump?"

"Yeah. It needs another twenty minutes, though, we can't use it."

"Wouldn't we be safe in here?" Donna asked, gesturing around the ship.

"They're _Daleks_," Rose said, her mind calling up all sorts of terrible memories at their very name. "Do we really want to take that chance?" She scrunched her lip up to her nose as she thought. Her hands clasped together hopefully, she turned to Jack, who had leaned over to check his gun, which he'd set on the floor of the TARDIS earlier. "What about your vortex manipulator?"

"Went down with the power loss. Sorry, Rosie."

A flicker of a smile crossed her lips for just a moment, as she remembered with fondness Jack's penchant for calling her Rosie. Back in the good ol' days...

"Okay," she breathed, trying to retain a certain level of calmness, though the worry was obvious in her stiff body language. "I think our best bet is outside, then."

"We'll have to leave him behind," Jack pointed out, glancing towards the unconscious Doctor on the jump seat.

"That's safer for him. He's unconscious, and he said he couldn't go out there anyways." Her friend gave a short nod, and immediately started to advance towards the gun he'd brought on the ship, the one he used to shoot the Dalek down. "I'd leave your gun here, if I were you. Dalek rule on Earth is strict enough, here they'd probably shoot us on sight!"

With a dramatic sigh, he set his prized gun back on the floor. He and Rose began cautiously walking to the doors of the TARDIS, actively listening for signs of any raucous commotion outside.

Donna, meanwhile, was in her own world. She'd been half listening to Rose and Jack as they sorted through their options, but there was this pulsing, hypnotizing beat echoing in her head:

_Thu-thump... thu-thump... thu-thump..._

It was a single heartbeat.

Her mind wandered for a moment as she considered the thought that _maybe_, just maybe, she was only worrying about the Doctor, and how he only had one heart working. The thing was, she'd heard this pounding earlier as well, back at the Shadow Proclamation. It couldn't be that simple.

As she thought on this, Rose and Jack opened the doors and slowly moved out. What existed out there was enough to immediately snap her back to real life. Those metal machines, those Daleks, they were everywhere! They were spread in the air like a raging disease, only living to hover from one post to the next. Donna frowned, as she realized how meaningless and regulated the life of a Dalek was. She was aware the Doctor saw them as brutal killing machines, but didn't one ever want to _experience_ something? Was there any potential for a Dalek to grow in life, or to love?

She'd probably never know.

"Daleks reign supreme. All hail the Daleks!" a large red Dalek on the sidelines prompted. The other Daleks quickly took up the ominous chant.

"Daleks reign supreme. All hail the Daleks! Daleks reign supreme. All hail the Daleks!"

Donna was just about to make tentative steps exiting the TARDIS, when that mysterious heartbeat began pounding in her ears again. This time, she found herself unable to move. She was pined in her spot. All she could do was gaze blankly ahead, and hear that rhythm drumming endlessly.

_Thu-thump... thu-thump... thu-thump... thu-thump..._

"Daleks reign supreme. All hail the Daleks! Daleks reign supreme. All hail the Daleks!"


	4. Doctor Tyler

_Chapter Four  
Doctor Tyler_

The outer shell of the red commanding Dalek was waxed so clean, Rose could almost see her warped reflection in it.

"Where is the Doctor?" it demanded, its eye stalk swiveling back and forth.

Her mind raced. Why the hell didn't she think of this? Who did the Daleks go to all the trouble of dragging the TARDIS here to capture? They wanted the Doctor, not her, not Jack. Without the Doctor present, the vile creatures would have no logical reason to spare them. They couldn't be used as bargaining chips. The two of them would be cannon fodder.

Unless...

A daring, dangerous idea popped up in her mind suddenly. If she were honest with herself, it was probably a terrible idea, and almost definitely doomed to failure. However, if she played her cards straight, it just might allow Jack and her a few more minutes to live, and she knew well that a few minutes could make a universe-changing difference. Anything could happen in a minute's time.

Before Jack could step forward to reply to the Dalek's question, she pushed in front.

"_I'm _the Doctor," she boldly declared. The second she did, she slowly began having doubts about her decision. The last time she'd played at "being the Doctor", so to speak, she'd almost gotten herself, Mickey, and Harriet Jones killed by the Sycorax. This time, with the fate of the entire universe at stake, she'd just have to be better. There was certainly no turning back now, not from the height of the new Dalek Empire.

In the corner of her eyes, she saw confusion flutter over Jack's face. This expression was one she'd rarely seen on him, as Jack was the sort of man who liked to know the plan and take charge. She shot a firm nod towards him, one that _hopefully _expressed her wish for him to trust her and play along.

"Impossible!" the Dalek scoffed, if such emotions could be expressed in robotic monotone. "All the Doctor's forms have been recorded. Yours does not match any in our banks!"

_Damn, this is going to be difficult, _Rose thought, and fought to keep from biting her lip like she often did when nervous. The Doctor rarely seemed nervous or scared when facing enemies and fighting monsters. No, he always stood strong, ready at a moment's notice with his cheeky commentary and a clever plan, even around the Daleks. To be honest, she hadn't a clue how he managed it. All she knew was, she could use a bit of his bravery now.

"One of your Dalek scouts shot me on the streets," she insisted, attempting to imitate the suave manner in which the Doctor dealt with his adversaries the best she could. "I regenerated, in the TARDIS."

"Conform claims!" the commanding Dalek said.

Immediately, a thin screen appeared towards the ceiling. The display flickered, before changing to a video of the Doctor, _her_ Doctor, about to get shot, before everything went so wrong. The footage was bathed in blue, recorded from the perspective of the Dalek that killed him. She watched with bleary eyes as the Dalek's laser skimmed the left side of his body, knocking him to the asphalt. Mere seconds later, the transmission turned to static, probably when Jack shot the Dalek with _his_ weapon.

She bit her tongue to keep from letting tears roll down her cheek, trying to stay strong. Jack and her glanced at each other briefly. He nodded, just once, a sign that he trusted her. It was a simple action, but enough to encourage her to keep going.

"Confirmed. The Doctor was shot minutes ago. We have records of male Time Lords regenerating into females. You are the Doctor."

"Yes," Rose agreed, her voice quickly picking up strength. "Yes, I am the Doctor, but never mind that- New body, and all... What d'ya think?"

From inside the TARDIS, Donna watched Rose turn in a circle, her hands outstretched with bravado. She didn't know what was going on anymore- every time she tried to concentrate on the events unfolding in front of her very eyes, she'd get a terrible migraine, and she'd hear that heartbeat pound in her ears. Her blurry view of Jack, Rose, and the Daleks started to blend until it was one entity, one shape. She knew something was wrong. Her muscles ached to move, to step out of the TARDIS, but for some reason, her body wouldn't let her.

"Doctor," Jack called for Rose, glancing worriedly at Donna. She either didn't hear him, or wasn't used to responding to the name 'Doctor' yet. _"Doctor,_" he said again, slightly stressing the name to get her attention. "Donna's still inside."

"Donna?" she said hesitantly, turning to look at her. She was still standing in the doorway, staring into the distance with a blank glimmer in her eyes and her mouth slightly agape. "You coming, or not?"

For a minuscule moment, it seemed as if Donna heard her, as she snapped out of her shocked stupor and looked directly at her. But before she could make her move and step out of the TARDIS, the doors slammed shut. Rose immediately ran towards the ship.

"What have you done?" her muffled voice shouted from inside.

"We didn't do anything!" she replied, pushing against the two wooden doors with the palms of her hand.

"Oi! Oi, I'm not staying behind!"

"Just- try pulling the doors again! Really hard!"

"I've tried, it _isn't working_!" she bellowed.

Breathlessly, Rose pulled the chain with her key on it from under her shirt. She jammed it in the lock, and tried to turn it, but something was stopping it from turning all the way. Oh, what she would do to have the Doctor's sonic screwdriver handy...

"Donna, stay calm! Is it bolted from the inside?" she asked.

_"There's no bolt!"_

Rose's mind rapidly moved through all her options. This had to be the work of the Daleks. They could have used their technology to magnetize the doors shut, or something like that. She couldn't use her dimension jump; it still needed fifteen or so minutes to recharge. If Jack's vortex manipulator was working, they might be able to materialize in the TARDIS, but what good would that really do? It wasn't like they could just run away from the Dalek Empire.

Enraged, Jack stepped towards the red commanding Dalek. "Let her out!"

"This is not of Dalek origin."

"Well, Jack didn't do it, and it certainly wasn't me!" Rose said, turning to face the enemy. "Do the math; and see who that leaves?"

"Negative!" it barked, rolling closer to them. Jack and Rose quickly stepped back a few steps. "This is Time Lord treachery! Nevertheless, the TARDIS is a weapon and it will be destroyed."

A trapdoor opened under the Doctor's ship, and it plummeted down into the unknown. Rose's single, very human heart nearly leapt into her throat. Donna was still in there. _He_ was still in there, unconscious and unable to help.

"Donna!" Jack called, reaching out for the trapdoor.

"Where did you send it?" Rose yelled at the Dalek, feeling the blood pumping wildly through her veins. "Bring it back!"

* * *

Donna shrieked as fire bursting from the TARDIS's floor licked at the tips of her feet. She tried to stand up, but the moment she reached her knees, another section of the ship exploded, knocking her back on her side. So instead, she crawled around the console, aching to find solace in one of the few places that wasn't aflame yet. She coughed hard, trying to get the acrid smoke out of her lungs.

She felt lost and confused, and not just because of the TARDIS blowing up around her. Everything was changing so quickly, rippling into a completely different form right around her. Rose was back, the universe was in grave danger, and the Doctor wasn't there to save it, because so was he.

Donna crawled over to the Doctor's limp body. He'd fallen off the jump seat during the fall; they had a very hard landing. As she dazedly hovered over him, she couldn't help but feel absolutely _useless_. If she really were important, as Rose seemed to think she was, why couldn't she help him? Why didn't she know what to do?

"Doctor! Come back... _Please_!" she shouted. "Don't you die! Don't you do that to me...!"

As expected, there was no response.

Then, she heard that rhythmic, pounding sound again. It was all she could hear. There was power in it. Slowly, her eyes trailed around the exploding TARDIS, only to land on the metal and glass jar that held the Doctor's hand. The more she looked at it, the more she felt magnetized to it, like the heartbeat _came_ from it, and she had to touch it...

While she crawled closer, the Doctor slowly began to stir awake at her side. The long strand of hair that covered his forehead flopped to the ground. His vision was blurry, but he could see the receptacle with his hand, and he could see Donna, reaching out. His eyes went wide with panic.

"_No_," he gasped for breath, "Don't... touch it... D-Donna, _don't!_"


	5. Reborn

_Chapter Five  
Reborn_

Her mind more fuzzy than it ought to be, Donna reached for the jar. Her fingers were about to brush against its smooth glass surface when she heard a weak, distant voice calling out.

"Don't... touch it..."

It was like a quiet whisper pressed lightly against her conscience, and was almost completely drowned out by the heartbeat in her head. Maybe it _was_ her conscience...

"D-Donna, don't!"

The voice was louder this time. More urgent, strained with worry. The muscles in her arm twitched, somehow yearning to listen to this little voice and obey. However, the unknown force that kept her mind latched to the hand in the jar continued to pull at her.

In fact, she could almost feel the heat emanating from it when a body crashed into her left side and knocked her away from the odd glass receptacle. The back of her head slammed into the bottom of the console. She was woozy for a brief moment, and her lungs felt useless, like they had shrunk to the size of kidney beans. Blinking rapidly, Donna Noble returned to full control, and cringed as pain blossomed from where she hit her head. Suddenly fearing she'd injured herself, she reached behind and carefully ran her fingers through her hair. Luckily, her fingers came back with no blood.

"Doctor?!" she called, her eyes now watering from the smoke.

Somehow navigating around the fuzzy red spots scattered upon her vision, her weary eyes fell upon the Doctor, who was sprawled in a pile of lanky limbs at her side. His right hand was pressed firmly against the jar, and his body was convulsing uncontrollably. His features were held in a state of pure shock, his mouth open in an 'o'. She gasped. The same flowing, golden energy that had exploded from his hands and head before he changed was now flowing _between_his body and his old severed hand.

Donna yelped as the glass jar exploded into thousands of tiny pieces, and covered her face with her arm to keep the shards from hurting her.

The Doctor fell backwards, gasping, and clutched his arm like it was a lifeline. As he started to hesitantly pull himself to his knees, his friend wrapped her arms tight around his neck. His mouth briefly screwed up in surprise, but nonetheless, he quickly returned the hug with a smile.

"I was starting to think you were dead," she said with a small sob, and buried her chin into his shoulder.

"No, no," he corrected, gently rubbing circles into her back to calm her down. "Not dead, just a few complications with my regeneration."

"But what do you _mean_, complications?"

He pulled away suddenly, leapt to his feet in one jump, and began to explain, more with his hands than with his words. "_Complications_, you, you know, every _possibility_ or _moment_ or _circumstance_ that makes life just a tad more difficult. In a vain attempt to keep my own face, I wasted a large sum of regenerative energy. And it almost killed me. For good. My body just needed to to settle for a while. I should be fine now. Actually," he muttered, and glanced worriedly around the rocking, burning TARDIS. "Scratch that last one. That might be conditional..."

The entire ship shook, nearly knocking the pair off their feet. Almost half of the remaining lights burst, and shards of glass and metal flew into the middle of the console room.

"Well, come on! Let's fly out of here!" Donna urged, pulling at his arm.

The Doctor didn't respond immediately. His eyes were glassy as he stared at the floor.

"Donna...?

"What?"

"We forgot about something."

"_What?_"

His adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. "My hand."

She followed his pointing finger to the floor of the metal platform. Her jaw dropped. The Doctor's severed hand had fallen there, but it was t_witching_. The same golden energy she saw when he regenerated surrounded it like an aura. She wheeled around to face him, arms outstretched.

"What, what did you do?!" Donna shouted. She looked back down and watched, mesmerized, as the energy from the hand stretched outwards into the shape of a body. A man's body. Then, in the blink of an eye, the energy dissipated, and the man shot upwards into a sitting position. Both Donna and the Doctor nearly jumped.

Wait... Impossibly unruly brown hair, sideburns, and those endlessly expressive eyebrows? She gaped at him in complete shock and surprise. The equally shocked and surprised Doctor, the one who she'd known as her confidant and friend, gaped back at her. How was this even possible?

"Oops..." the floppy haired Doctor standing next to her whispered.

Donna still couldn't overcome her pure shock. It was the face of her best friend, one she though she'd lost. Yet here he was, reborn from a hand. "It's you!"

"Oh, yes!" her Doctor exclaimed with a tilt of his head.

Just as soon as a smile began to brighten her face, a cursory glance downwards took it away. He was naked. Fabulous, thanks. Now she needed to scrub her brain out. In her peripheral vision, she watched the new, floppy haired Doctor look, cover his own eyes with the back of one hand, and then peek again, as if the mad Time Lord hadn't seen his own body naked a billion times before.

"Ohhhhh..." he groaned quietly, still actively deciding if he should look away or not.

"You're naked," she slowly pointed out, averting her eyes.

Her Doctor's brows furrowed. Donna assumed he didn't have to look twice to figure that out, unlike the crazy mop of hair next to her. "Oh, yes," he muttered. When the TARDIS shook again, he rocketed to his feet and circled around, seeming heartbroken at the destruction. "Never mind that, what happened in here? Donna, are we _crashing_?"

The floppy haired Doctor (Donna still wasn't sure how else she could refer to each of them- it wasn't as if she could call them _Doctor One _and _Doctor Two_...) stumbled to the console, and managed to avoid the tongue of fire that attempted to lick his feet. He hastily spun the monitor to his side and began poking around.

"If this ol' brain is still rattling on in the right directions," he mused out loud, "i-it appears... that the emergency alignment couplings are still intact, so we couldn't be."

Then, the time ship jolted again, this time so violently that it caught everyone off guard. The two Doctors ducked from an arc of sparks that flew from the top of the time rotor. A thick plastic-lined wire snapped and swung down at Donna from above. She shrieked, only narrowly missing it.

"I've had a slight change of opinion," the floppy haired Doctor said, laughing nervously, and then flung himself back to the console. "We're... sorta-crashing! Get those shields back up!" he instructed his counterpart with a point of his finger.

"I've tried, it's no use!" he shouted, busy with controls of the TARDIS that Donna didn't recognize from her flying lessons. "The power's been drained!"

"No, no, no! If we don't fly her away this second, the outer shell will be destabilized! Hold on!"

Working in tandem, the two Doctors wound around the console, pushing levers and winding dials like some sort of cosmic waltz. Slowly, Donna could hear the glorious sound of the time rotor, moaning and working at full power. She glanced up and couldn't help but smile as she watched the rods inside the rotor bob up and down. They were dematerializing. They were _safe_.

When the lights on the domed walls of the TARDIS's console room stopped blowing, and she was certain that they had left whatever hell they had fallen into, she let out a large breath she didn't know she was holding. Unfortunately, one gawk around the place told her that her problems were far from over. Fire still forked from random crannies in the floor. But more than that, there were now _two_ Doctors with her. _Two_. How does that happen? _What_ happened? Are both of them the real, proper Doctor now? Can you grow from a hand and still manage to be the proper Doctor? So many questions plagued her mind, all at once.

"Is there a fire extinguisher we can use, or somethin'?" she asked, quickly moving as far away from the fire as she could.

"Just wait and see," both Doctors said simultaneously, and then pointed at each other in mutual amusement.

She gawked at _them_ this time, but nonetheless listened and waited for a few seconds. There was soon a little _puff_, and a cloud of milky white gas filtered through the room.

"It's a gas mixture," her Doctor explained automatically, as the fire around the console room slowly flickered out of existence. "Most of it's Zypheron gas, first discovered far in your future, in the Cushing Nebula. Not only is it very good at putting out fires, but it's also breathable by a high percentage of species."

Donna let this information sink in for a moment, as she watched the gas disappear into the same unknown place it came from. She could always count on the Doctor to enlighten her with an interesting fact about something in the universe, even in troubling times. With all that had happened today, his mini science lessons were more than welcome. They calmed her.

Her Doctor continued to roam clothesless around the console room, messing with this or that, adjusting a dial on the console, and keeping a wary eye on the other Doctor. He'd been staring at him a lot, she noticed. It didn't seem to be out of jealousy or anger, but more out of curiosity and confusion, like he were trying to figure him out.

When he finally walked around to her side of the console, she couldn't hold her thoughts in anymore.

"Are you _actually_ going to put some clothes on, or are you just gonna parade around the TARDIS stark naked?" she asked him, averting her eyes again.

Wordlessly, the floppy haired Doctor unfastened the buttons of his suit jacket and tossed it over to his counterpart.

"Thanks," he said quietly. He then set about to tying it securely around his waist, utilizing it like a loincloth. Donna leaned up against the console, next to where he stood.

"I'm so..." she began, but then stopped. Whatever she was going to say hung in the air, unspoken. She could never say it. Not to his face.

"So what?" he asked, and leaned on the side of the console as well, looking at her intently. Looking at her like he cared, because he always did. Sometimes Donna felt like she didn't appreciate that facet of the Doctor enough. Besides her granddad, she didn't receive that kind of care much growing up.

She contemplated telling him for a second, but something held her back. "No, what does it matter?" she finally said, rubbing her forehead wearily with the base of her hand. "I thought you were gone forever, and now here I am talking to you. I've seen so many impossible things, but I don't even know what's happening anymore, really."

They both peered at the Doctor on the far most side of the console, the one who still wore the shirt and trousers of the man that came before him. The Doctor who had been Donna's best friend for more than a year and a half now tilted his head towards her, and began whispering in her ear.

"If it makes you feel any better, for once in my life, neither can I."

* * *

Rose never wanted to watch live footage of the TARDIS burning, and yet she found herself magnetized to the screen anyways. Her emotions were in a tangle. She honestly didn't know what she might do if they died.

One of the Dalek soldiers barked mocking words as if in glee.

"Total TARDIS destruction in ten rels," it announced. "Nine, eight, seven..."

_Come on, Doctor, _she thought, mentally urging them to save themselves. _Come on, Donna! Fly the TARDIS away, anything to let us know you're still alive!_

(She briefly realized in the moment that this was the first time she'd referred to this new man as 'the Doctor'. A small feeling of guilt grew inside her- did it have to take a life threatening situation for her to figure that out?- but she managed to ignore it for now.)

On the screen, the time ship continued to bob in the flames. As the Dalek soldier finished counting, it fell completely in. She gasped.

"...Two, one. The TARDIS has been destroyed."

Still holding a shard of hope in her heart, Rose squinted at the screen, waiting for something, anything, to occur. For any sign that they were alive and well... There was nothing. The TARDIS was nowhere to be seen. As she realized what had happened, what _must_ have happened, her blood began to boil and her heart began to cry out.

After all they'd been through, how could he be gone now? Such a wonderful, beautiful man, beloved by so many in the universes, and his flame was put out in a snap of one's fingers. She almost couldn't bear to think about it now- all those days, all those adventures... all of her love- and now, any future she could have ever had with him was cut tragically short. He was one in an infinite sum of people. There would never be another like him. And Donna, poor Donna, was lost in vain before she could understand how truly incredible she was. She'd only known her for a short time, but it was enough. A vast, empty void began to grow inside her, becoming so large she felt like she could fall through it.

A comforting hand fell upon her shoulder. It was Jack's. To her, his presence was the only thing keeping her strong right now. Was this why the Doctor kept seeking out companions, time and time again? So he couldn't feel the pain? If this was only a fraction of the pain he had felt after losing his own planet, his own _species_\- then she had not a clue what in the universe could've inspired him to keep living.

The commander Dalek moved closer, probably more confident now that they had succeeded in breaking her. "Now tell me, Doctor. What do you feel? Anger? Sorrow? Despair?"

She didn't bother with a reply. It wasn't like the Daleks deserved one, after all the agony they'd sent her through over the years. Rebelliously, a single tear she didn't want to show answered their question for her.

"If emotions are so important, surely we have enhanced you?"

Behind her, Jack's face twisted in rage.

"Yeah?" he said, taking a handgun Rose didn't know he'd brought out of his pocket. "Feel this!"

He shot at the red commander Dalek, aiming for the eyestalk. The bullet was close, but not close enough. It bounced off the eyestalk's rim, dealing next to no damage.

"Exterminate!"

Rose didn't need to think twice about what this would mean. The Dalek shot back, and Jack Harkness, her longtime friend, fell to the ground in a limp pile of limbs. Her heart caught in her throat. How could this be really happening?

"You MURDERED him!" she screeched, complete unfiltered rage building up inside of her.

"Escort the Doctor to the vault," the Dalek commanded, brushing off her words like they were nothing. For a Dalek, there was no doubt that they _were_nothing. "She is the plaything of Davros now."

Waiting tears burned in her eyes. She felt like her façade was already fragmenting. How long could she stay resilient in the Doctor's shoes? This wasn't like the Battle of Torchwood, where her mum and Pete were waiting for her on the other side of the void. Here, she had nothing. No Doctor, no Donna, no Jack, no family, nothing. For the first time in her life, she was completely and utterly alone.

Was this the hell the Doctor lived in?


	6. Hello Again

_Chapter Six  
__Hello Again_

He'd been dissected once or twice, years earlier.

As one might expect, it was nothing short of horrifying. He had to play dead through scientists poking about in his brain and cardiovascular system, just to find a suitable window of escape. Jack expected the same level of conscious torture if the Daleks managed to realize he was still alive. He had to play dead once more.

By now, this was an action that was engrained in his muscles and mind, something required of him on an almost weekly basis. It had been more than a century since Rose made him immortal, but death was already an old friend. He had skirted death's borders more times than he could count. He knew its silence, its peace, but never completely crossed the line. He often wondered what it'd be like to completely let go of the thin threads that held him to life and embrace that still silence, but whatever Rose had done to him on Satellite Five, his body wouldn't allow him. Eventually, the question of death settled in his mind as something that- for now- was unattainable.

Soon, he felt a heavy, overbearing heat approaching him in waves. Not looking forward to what he would discover, Jack opened his eyes. It took less than a second for the intense heat to burn his retinas. However, less than a second was all he needed to gain his bearings and see where he was. They had thrown him into a furnace.

Seconds more in here, and he would die again. Since he'd rather _not_ hold a surprise reenactment of that time he was buried and died hundreds of times, he better move now. Grunting, he pushed his sweating body against the narrow door, and with nothing less than discomfort, managed to shove it open. He rolled out onto the hard floor of the Dalek ship, more welcoming than a furnace any day.

When his eyes had healed enough, he began to see a blurry, feminine shape...

He blinked rapidly, spots in his vision quickly vanishing. She wore all black, her tight-fitting leather jacket hugging her curves. Her hair was pulled back out of the way with a hair tie, but it was clear the curly blonde locks had a mind of their own. A hand-sized weapon Jack knew _for sure_ wasn't from this millennium sat at her hip, secure in a holster. She turned her head, catching his stare for just a heartbeat.

"Hello," he said, and managed a half-smile. (Considering what he'd been through in the past five minutes, it was impressive enough.) "Fancy meeting a woman of your beauty aboard a Dalek ship."

The woman gave him a coquettish smirk, and put a finger to her lips. "Shhhh... Be quiet and keep moving, Jack."

"Wait... How do you know my-"

"Your name?" she completed for him. The mysterious woman pointed at a brown leather wristband on her arm, and winked. "Spoilers."

It was a vortex manipulator, he realized immediately. Somehow, she possessed a vortex manipulator, a tool that couldn't simply be picked up at the local bazar. They were _rare_. Few in the universe had even seen one.

"So I'll be meeting you again?" he said with his brows raised, thinking on his feet.

"Oh, I'll see you in the future. Or in the past." She laughed, a laugh that somehow made her all the more sexier. "I often do mix those two up."

She smiled at him one last time before turning and running off down the dark corridor. Not five seconds after she rounded the corner, Jack heard gunshots, and the sound of Daleks screaming. With the firepower she had, there was not a doubt in his mind that she'd fare fine, whatever she was up to. He shook his head, and began looking for a way to get back to Rose. Maybe he could use the ventilation shafts...

* * *

The Daleks led Rose into a dark, dingy chamber. Ominous pillars and archways towered above her head, but there were no windows. Everything was made of metal. Desperately, she turned to inspect the walls behind her. There was only one doorway- the one she entered through- and it was guarded by three more Daleks. Red lights tinted the space, making it hard to fully see _what _it was that was thrown carelessly in the corner. She thought it might be half of a broken Dalek eyestalk.

The odd thing was, a few years earlier, she would've found all of this terribly claustrophobic. As a child, claustrophobia was one of her biggest fears, along with abandonment and falling. She didn't wish to think about the Doctor right now because of the pain it presented her, but her mind kept leading her back to him, and to a thought she knew to be true: it was because of her madcap adventures with him that her childhood fears had faded.

Today, the fear that pricked at the back of her mind was that her actions here would lead to the loss of countless of lives, both human and non-human.

As the metal menaces coaxed her towards the center of the chamber, Rose became slightly frantic. Her fingers brushed the button on her junked dimension jump- they had disabled it as they were bringing her over here- wishing she could activate the device, run away to the furthest corners of creation, and let someone else take care of the Daleks.

_But there is no one else, _the rational side of her mind pointed out. _As far as I know, I'm the last. The last to stop them from destroying billions of innocents._

Once the Daleks enclosed her in the middle of the Crucible, she heard a familiar, grating voice. Davros, an old enemy of the Doctor. She remembered the terror hacking the Time Lord's video call only a few minutes before she found him again.

"Activate the holding cells," he ordered, and a blue shimmering light fell around her. Hesitantly, she reached out her hand to brush it. While she knew it was an electrical barrier, it seemed like solid glass. She couldn't press through it. She was trapped.

"Excellent. Even when powerless, a Time Lord is best contained," Davros said. He rolled into the light, staring daggers at her. "But I can sense a Time Lord by their arrogance and their pride. All you have is terror."

His gaze sent a cold shiver down her spine and into the depths of her soul. Rose felt as if her mind was being searched, her only true place of privacy being violated. This was when she realized she couldn't keep up this charade anymore. Davros _knew_ the true Doctor. On the flip side, she knew almost nothing about him, the creator of the Daleks. Rose swallowed her fear, and promptly made up her mind. She was done pretending to be the Doctor; she was _done_with it. Hadn't she learned a lot from him, about how to stand on her own, how to push for what was right even when trapped in the midst of darkness?

It was time to be herself.

"All right!" she proclaimed, pulling her wits together. "I'm not the Doctor. And I'm not a Time Lord. I am a _human_, Rose Marion Tyler, and today, I'm defending the Earth!"

A clatter of noise followed her brave words. Daleks in the Crucible began communicating all at once, most Dalek voices interrupting the others. Instantly, her lungs felt as tiny as peanuts. For all she knew, they could exterminate her and end her life at any moment. All it took was Davros's orders...

"The female is terrified! Watch her tremble," one of the Daleks that brought her in exclaimed loudly over all the others, taunting her.

"Y-Yes, I'm afraid, but isn't fear just one of the best weapons?" Rose questioned them. A lump formed in the back of her throat, but she tried to ignore it. As she continued to speak, her voice gained strength. "Isn't fear what inspires every civilization to fight back against tyranny? Against evil? Now, I may not be an arrogant, prideful Time Lord, if that's all you think the Doctor is, but don't think for a moment that makes me any less capable of stopping you.

"I've traveled with him you know, with the Doctor. I've seen who he is and what he's capable of, and if it would save the universe, I will fight just as hard as he would. I've done it before. Thousands of years in the future, I've turned an entire empire of Daleks to dust," she boasted, peering right through Davros. "Atoms, floating in the air! And maybe you've heard those stories, echoing back through time... stories of the big Bad Wolf?"

If he was intimidated by her words, he didn't let it show. Instead, his features contorted into fury.

"The nerve of you, child, for threatening the Dalek race! So full of fire, and where did that flame come from? You've traveled with the Doctor too long."

"No... Not long enough," she whispered remorsefully. Davros failed to hear her, but maneuvered himself closer to her holding cell. Rose had already noticed how vastly different he was from the Daleks. He didn't speak like his sick creations did, in harsh robotic monotone. His voice was more of a dark purr. There was vast intelligence in it.

Soon enough, his jeering face was nearly pressed against the electrical holding cell. "And to think you crossed entire universes, striding parallel to parallel to find him again, only to be abandoned in the dark." He paused. "Without the Doctor, I have no use for you."

"Then why am I still alive?" she hissed through clenched teeth.

"You must be here. It was foretold. Even the Supreme Dalek would not dare to contradict the prophecies of Dalek Caan."

Davros flicked a switch on his control panel. A light before them turned on to reveal an absolute monstrosity. It was a Dalek, its gold casing blown to bits. What was left of the shell had started rusting, and the creature inside was left disfigured and dying.

"So cold and dark," it spat, looking directly at her with its drooping eye. "Fire is coming. The endless flames."

Rose's lip turned up and scrunched against her nose. "What is that _thing_?" she asked, feeling a pressure in her stomach as if she were going to throw up.

She wasn't expecting an answer, but Davros gave her one regardless.

"The last of the Cult of Skaro, Dalek Caan. An emergency temporal shift sent him into the midst of the Time War itself. There, he saw time. Its infinite complexity and majesty, raging through his mind. And he saw you, Miss Tyler. You and the Doctor."

Rose turned from him to Dalek Caan, memories suddenly rushing into her brain. Caan was there at the Battle of Canary Wharf. It was one of the four that emerged from the sphere, the void ship. She thought her sacrifice that day had destroyed all those Daleks, but evidently, it hadn't. Was it all for _nothing_?

"This I have foreseen, in the wild and the wind," Caan continued. "The Doctor will be here as witness, at the end of everything. And he will be a stranger, a stranger to all but one of his precious Children of Time. And one of them will die!" The Dalek began to laugh, a grating, mutilated laughter that made it clear it had gone completely insane.

Rose could feel small stress lines appear on her forehead as she shot her eyebrows up. "But the Doctor's not here, is he? And he's not going to be. He was in the TARDIS with my friend when you sent her to the ship's core to die. You _killed_ him!" she roared at him. "So what good is your prophesy now, huh, Davros?!"

She was sure Davros almost laughed. Suddenly, she began to have doubts again. The bravery she had built up slowly began to dissipate, leaving an ordinary, worried, fearful Rose Tyler.

"Oh, your anger is almost as vengeful as his. Traveling with the Doctor has given you courage. But courage cannot bring down the power of the Dalek Empire. Because the ending approaches. The testing begins."

"The testing of what?" she asked, a sinking feeling in her stomach.

"The Reality Bomb."

Rose heard static from the speakers, and then a Dalek's voice. "Testing calibration of Reality bomb. Firing in ten rels. Nine, eight, seven..."

"Behold. The apotheosis of my genius," Davros boasted. He pressed a button on his control panel, and a screen came into existence near the ceiling.

On it was a live feed from another section of the ship, enveloped in steam from the machinery set up there. At least two-dozen Daleks entered the vast space, leading a cluster of humans inside. Their hands pressed against the back of their heads. One of the young women looked as if she were to burst into tears in fear, and Rose didn't blame her. She had no clearer idea of what was about to happen than the young woman did.

The commanding Dalek continued its countdown over the com link. "Four, three, two, one, zero. Activate planetary alignment field."

The feed on the screen was replaced with a view of the planets in the Medusa Cascade. In seconds, a strange glowing energy enveloped them, shining brighter than a star. Her brows weaved together.

"Planetary alignment..." she mumbled, watching. Her eyes grew large, horrified as she realized. "The planets."

As she watched the people on the screen dissolve to dust in the air, a fury began to bubble up inside her.

"Test completed," the commanding Dalek exclaimed.

Her face was white as a sheet, horrified. "What happened? _What did you do to them?_"

"Electrical energy, Miss Tyler. Every atom in existence is bound by an electrical field. The Reality bomb cancels it out," Davros explained, lightly gesturing with his hand as if it were nothing. "Structure falls apart. That test was focused on the prisoners alone. Full transmission will dissolve every form of matter."

"The stars are going out," she breathed, the pieces of the puzzle finally coming together. "You're using the twenty-seven planets you stole as a- a gigantic _weapon_. Destroying whole galaxies." A shudder of fear ran through her bones as what he planned to do finally clicked in her brain. She slammed her wrists against the shield, vying to escape. "No! You _can't_ do that!"

"Yes, and across the entire universe. Never stopping, never faltering, never fading. People and planets and stars will become dust, and the dust will become atoms, and the atoms will become... nothing. And the wavelength will continue, breaking through the Rift at the heart of the Medusa Cascade into every dimension, every parallel, every single corner of creation. This is my ultimate victory, Miss Tyler!" he bellowed. "The destruction... of reality... _itself!"_

_"No," _she whispered horsely, her heart sinking to the bottom of her gut. Other Dalek voices heard over the com began shouting orders.

"Prepare for universal detonation. The fleet will gather at the Crucible. All Daleks will return to shelter from the cataclysm. We will become the only life forms in existence!"

Heavily breathing more and more every moment, Rose rapidly pushed the large plastic button on her shoddy dimension jump. Her fingers were nearly trembling.

"Come on!" she begged. "Work, please, _work_! Oh god... No Doctor, no TARDIS, no Torchwood, and I don't even know what to do!" Despairing, she fell to her knees.

She had no ideas, no plans clever enough to stop something like this. She had no supplies. She couldn't call for reinforcements. And she couldn't run. This was it. She was done. There was nothing she could do to stop the stars from going out and the universe from growing cold.

Helpless and lost within her own thoughts, Rose lay frozen on the dank floor, supporting herself with her hands. A faint breeze ran through her hair, or at least her mind imagined one did. She doubted wind could blow inside the electrical barrier.

Then, she heard a sound often associated with that kind of light breeze, a beautiful, ancient, melodic sound. She glanced up, squinting past Daleks and metal archways, and saw Dalek Caan. Its eye twitched open and closed, and its tentacles moved in front as if to protect itself from something foreign, something a Dalek usually wouldn't be able to sense. She wasn't crazy. There _had_ to be a breeze running through the room. And that sound...

With the faintest glimmer of hope, she stood to her feet and peered all around. The ancient sound grew louder, filling the room. Rose now recognized it as the engines of the TARDIS whirring. She watched as a tall blue shape began to materialize in front of her.

The Daleks began to notice their surprise visitor at this time...

"The TARDIS has survived! Explain! _Explain_!" one demanded.

Rose stood breathless as the time ship finished materializing and became a solid, wooden box once more. She could hear footsteps from inside. They were _alive_. They were alive!

The double doors were pulled inward, and a white light poured into the Crucible. Rose squinted, trying to see the figure inside. All she could see right now was a silhouette. The figure slowly stepped out of the ship, revealing himself. It was the brand new, floppy haired Doctor, but something was visibly different. He seemed older. Outside, he still appeared youthful, but there were obvious traces of worry lines on his forehead, and the days gone by in the depths of his eyes. Gone was that brown pinstriped suit. Instead he wore skinny black trousers, sturdy boots, a collared off-white shirt, and a long green coat, all topped off with a red bow tie. Donna, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen.

A smug, yet shy grin crossed his lips as he clasped his hands together. "Hello again, Rose Tyler."


	7. Ultimatum

_Chapter Seven _  
_Ultimatum_

Understanding what was floating about in this Doctor's mind was impossible, as always.

The only question of hers he answered was where Donna was. He said she was safe, but didn't say anything more on the matter. This comforted her a little, but there was still a strand of anxiety jumbling about within her, insistent on making her paranoid about _everything_.

To her, it seemed he wasn't even taking this situation seriously. He almost laughed as Davros activated a holding cell around him. The mad Time Lord began messing with the electrical barrier gleefully, running the back of his hand across the blue shimmering light. When Martha Jones called to threaten the Daleks with detonating nuclear bombs in the Earth's crust, he casually told her that it would be wise to wait before jumping to an ultimatum. He had a plan stowed away in the back of his clever mind, yeah? For the sake of the universe, she hoped he did.

It was only after her mum, Mickey, Jack, and Sarah Jane threatened to blow up the entire Dalek ship they were on that she became increasingly worried. Everyone they knew were calling in threats to the Daleks, yet he was smirking like the Cheshire cat. It was possible he was simply impressed with his friends' strategic thinking, but even when she considered both sides, neither option was completely satisfying. Martha's plan meant the destruction of Earth, the home of her and billions of others. Jack and the gang's plan would end their lives and the Daleks' all at once. Call her selfish, but Rose wanted to save the universe _and_ manage to stay alive in it.

She cautiously stepped to the furthest reaches of her holding cell, cupping her mouth. "Doctor!" she stressed. "Why are you smiling like that? They're clever ransoms, I'll admit, but people you care for are gonna get hurt. There has to be some other way!"

He spun around upon hearing her comment, and she assumed the meaning was clear. His eyes searched the vault- as if he thought he could find a sudden stroke of inspiration in the architecture- and he began pacing. She found herself staring at Davros' right hand as he rapped his iron knuckles on his board of controls.

"Do you understand the ways of the Doctor now, Miss Tyler?" he said. "The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun. But this is the truth. He takes ordinary people and he fashions them into weapons. And it appears he _pleasures_ in it!" His grim smirk grew, as the Time Lord's earlier good humor faded. "Behold your Children of Time, Doctor, transformed into murderers!"

"They're not the murderers on this ship," the Doctor corrected, inclining his sight towards him.

"Already I have seen them sacrifice today, for their beloved Doctor. The Earth woman, who fell opening the Subwave Network..."

"Who?"

"Harriet Jones," Rose answered quietly. An image of her standing strong and defiant before a small platoon of Daleks came to mind, just prior to her extermination. "She gave her life just to get you here."

His mouth fell slightly agape and his eyes glistened, and in a way, seeing his heartbroken reaction made it all that more real for her. Harriet Jones was more than an ally; she was their friend. She knew exactly what was going through that angst-ridden head of his right now. He was feeling guilt for becoming an influence in her life, and for deposing her. That foolish man blamed himself- like he always did- but she knew there wasn't anything that could have changed her fate. In the end she chose it for herself, and this made her the bravest woman Rose ever knew.

"How many more?" Davros taunted him. "Just think. How many have died in your name?"

A soft chuckle arose from the Doctor, one that conveyed more contempt than amusement. "A lot of people," he murmured. He trained his angered eyes on the Dalek puppet leader, the contempt he conveyed in his laughter now made clear. "A _lot _of people have _died_, Davros. I'm no angel. But if you'd like to talk about high body counts, I'd recommend glancing at the bodies at your feet first. So," he said, and clasped his hands together, "where shall we start? Skaro, perhaps?"

Davros's features contorted into rage, and Rose was sure he was preparing to shoot a nasty reply the Doctor's way, but the commanding red Dalek interrupted over the intercom before anything else could happen.

"Enough! Engage defense zero five!"

"It's the Crucible or the Earth!" Martha's familiar voice called, slightly quivering.

"Transmat engaged!"

In seconds, the Daleks teleported all of them into the room. They tumbled to the floor in a pile. Martha raced to sit up, and began searching the pockets in her uniform, likely for that key she had. And was that a UNIT insignia on her jacket? Jack (oh, she was so relieved to see him alive and in the flesh) instinctively reached for his gun, before realizing the Daleks had confiscated it. On his side, Sarah Jane Smith helped Rose's mum to her feet, while Mickey cradled his right arm for some reason. She hoped he hadn't injured it...

The Doctor began shouting instructions to their friends that had just arrived in the vault, but she didn't catch the specifics because she was paying attention to something more important. Her own mother. She stood defiant, wearing the same blue sweater she had on when Rose first left the parallel world. She thought she was utterly alone minutes earlier, but this was never the truth. How long had she and Mickey been here, chasing after her? Waves of conflicting emotions crashed through her mind, nearly bringing her to tears.

"Mum, I told you not to follow me," Rose scolded, her voice almost breaking. And she did, too. Almost word for word.

_"Listen Mum, don't follow me. It's too dangerous, and I don't want you being separated from Dad and Tony forever."_

Jackie crossed her arms, always too stubborn to listen, and this time, too loving to comply. "Yeah, but I couldn't leave you!"

Rose glanced up in a daze, nibbling on the inside of her lip as she thought about what her mother just admitted. In the parallel world, she had everything she wanted. Jackie Tyler had her husband, her family, and more money than she'd ever need. Yet to think she would risk all of that just to make sure _she _was safe made her head spin. Her heart swelled with an unfathomable joy she couldn't articulate in words.

Then, Davros spoke, and any comfort her mum's arrival had granted her was stifled in an instant.

"The final prophecy is in place," he rasped. "The Doctor and his children, all gathered as witnesses. Supreme Dalek, the time has come. Now, _detonate_... _THE REALITY BOMB!"_

The Daleks began shouting orders to one another in synthetic, monotone voices. Light reflected off the metallic spheres on the lower quadrant of their bronze casings as they hovered around her transparent prison. She never completely grasped the point of those spheres, (why would a normal Dalek want to self-destruct?), but before she could think too much on this topic, a passing Dalek's gunstick caught her attention, and fear bubbled in the pit of her stomach once more.

She turned towards the Doctor, her brow pressed together. He still didn't seem worried about the situation, and was content to stand there and adjust his burgundy bow tie.

"How are we gonna stop them from destroying all of reality when we're trapped in here?" she asked him. "We've barely got three minutes!"

"Brave heart, Rose," he said, his eyes gleaming reassuringly. "Because unlike ol' Rusty over there, I have the advantage. I know something he doesn't!"

"Which is what, exactly?"

"Oh, it's a thing, a clever thing," he explained away with a flick of his hand. "One that will happen in approximately..." He bent his wrist to look at his watch face, located on the inside of his wrist. The Doctor looked up at her, a small smile brightening his expression. "...anytime now."

Rose brushed a blonde strand out of her face and glanced instinctively at her mother and Mickey, making sure they were still okay. They stood with the others, in a cluster. She could practically articulate the sheer anxiety cascading from them. Like the blowing of the wind, she saw the effects of it, ranging from Jack's fingers pressing in and out of a fist, to the uneasy expression Sarah Jane held as she glanced around the dark vault. She was sure she knew the desperate thought that dashed through everyone's mind. The clock was ticking.

Then, the dim lighting in the vault switched off, and her world became as black as the Void.

"What is the meaning of this?!" a Dalek exploded, the lights on its top cutting through the darkness for only seconds.

Everyone began to mutter, likely all wondering about the same thing. The Daleks' uproar quickly drowned them out. Surprised, she tried to glance around, assuming someone here had found a switch to pull. Or maybe, the Doctor was right, and he had a plan after all? Did he do this? Was this some trick he pulled with his sonic screwdriver? She grinned, suddenly positive that the clever Doctor she knew and loved was back. She wished she was able to see the smug smirk that was almost certainly crossing his face now, but it was hard to see anything but the lights on top of those Daleks, as they interrupted and shouted over each other, making an unholy racket.

"There she is," she heard him say gleefully.

Rose Tyler heard him snap his fingers, and the lighting switched back on immediately. From her peripherals, she saw Mickey flicking his gaze around, confused. She understood what he was thinking now.

"You can't stop the countdown, Doctor," Davros taunted. "I will have my _victory_!"

The Doctor gave a throaty chuckle. "Well, no. I can't stop this countdown, can I? Can I, eh? No, no, no, I can't. Don't have the time, don't have the supplies- although honestly, I think it's just that I don't have the patience to try," he rattled on quickly, flapping his hands about for extra emphasis. He clasped them together excitedly. "So! Let's try something else!"

The Time Lord nearly pranced to the furthest edge of his electric prison, and stared right at him, the creator of the Daleks. She watched him carefully as he kept firm, intimidating eye contact with his old enemy, the creator of the worse nightmare in the universe.

"Do you know why the lights switched off? System reboot. I don't need to disable your _weapon,_" he spat. "What would you say... if we tried disabling your planet powerhouse instead?"

Martha Jones was grinning. Jack whistled, impressed. The Doctor turned and provided a mock bow before directing his attention back to his old nemesis. Davros's face widened in shock, perhaps understanding what was happening. His dynasty was ending. The Oncoming Storm was here. Up on the view screen, just in time for the Doctor's announcement, the twenty-seven planets began to blink out of existence, one by one. Of course, they weren't really disappearing forever... They were going home. Rose and the others cheered.

"What?" the creator of the Daleks rasped incredulously. "How did you-?"

"EXPLAIN! _EXPLAIN!"_

"Here's a lesson for you, _Daleks_," the Doctor said. "Every transmat can be reversed. You just have to pinpoint the right wavelength. And I found it! The Tandoca Scale! Score, Doctor one, Daleks zero!" He paused, and smirked mischievously at Davros. "And you know what? You were right, this one time. I do have a secret weapon. And she's significantly less apologetic than I am when the situation demands she shoot people."

Rose heard something that was almost akin to a mini sonic boom. As she saw a dark figure materialize between the Doctor and her, she realized what it was. That was the roar of the Time Vortex she heard. And this curly-haired woman who arrived possessed a vortex manipulator.

"The vault is breached! Repeat, the vault is breached," one of the Daleks called out.

"Hello, Doctor!" the newcomer greeted huskily. The woman's sight fell upon her, standing opposite from the Doctor. "Hello, Rose," she nodded approvingly, with an almost naughty grin. Her head turned towards the others. "Everyone, if you know what's best for you, I'd get in that corner."

As soon as she finished speaking, the woman flipped a small weapon out of her side holster, and began to shoot at the Daleks. Jack, Sarah, Martha, Jackie, and Mickey heeded her warning, and ran to the other side of the vast room. (Although Jack would have joined her, if he had a gun.) She aimed for their eyestalks, and the result was utter destruction. One of the Daleks ripped apart when the energy beam reached it, machinery and organic remains spurting everywhere. They tried to shoot back, but she was too fast. The woman turned in a tight circle, and killed any Dalek in sight, her arms and legs working together like some sort of savage dance. When she finally paused to rest, she'd destroyed every Dalek except for Davros and Caan. The remains of the others littered the floor of the vault.

Even after this display of her marksmanship, she wasn't finished. The woman marched right up to Davros, and prodded her weapon into his chest. It had to hurt like the dickens, from the information she'd gleaned when he called the Doctor on the TARDIS. He had no skin or muscle protecting his chest cavity. He'd sacrificed it to breed more Daleks. He was just bones and organs, now.

"Oh, forgot to mention," the Doctor spoke up, waving his hand as if it something non-consequential. "River Song, this is Davros. Davros, River Song. She really likes guns, probably a bit more than she 'ought to."

"If you so much as move your finger, I will pull this trigger and your heart will stop stone-dead," River hissed, glaring at the creator of the Daleks.

"Yeah, but I'm beginning to doubt he even has one," Mickey said as he stepped forward from the corner.

"I passed doubting years ago," Sarah Jane mentioned, and turned to Jack. "He's a tyrant, plain and clear!"

"I'd agree with that, today..." Rose muttered. She heard River call from across the Vault.

"I'd rather not keep the creator of the Daleks at gunpoint all day, you know, Sweetie. I thought you said you had a plan to get _rid_ of them!"

The Doctor's mouth was open wide, caught in the middle of a thought. He tapped his fingers on his cheek, and blinked around, his brow creased. "A bit of a plan, yes. The rest is... ah, a little slow in _coming_."

"What about that 'warp' thing, Jack?" her mum asked, pulling on the former Time Agent's arm. "Can't we still use it?"

"The warp star? I dropped it when we teleported, but if I can figure out our current location I might be able to backtrack and retrieve it..."

Martha's face brightened suddenly. "Do you think it's possible to set up a delay for it, so we can escape in the TARDIS?" she proposed.

The Doctor smirked unapologetically. They were all magnificent. All of them, one hundred percent. Here they were, thinking up clever ideas of their own, even in the midst of danger! He only wished he would remember what he did to get rid of the Daleks the first time he'd been here. He had, hadn't he? He had been here? He knew his timelines were tangled at this point, but surely he should have remembered by now?

The ancient traveler brushed these thoughts off as something that was unattainable for now. He'd learn when time was ready for him to. For the meantime, his goal was to get his friends and companions off this Dalek ship safely, which appeared it would be an easy feat.

He'd realize later just how wrong he was.

Out of nowhere, more Daleks teleported into the Vault, surrounding them. The Doctor heard River's pained scream. His head snapped around instantly. The vortex manipulator on her wrist zapped and hissed with energy. Davros had shot the device on her wrist, letting the scalding energy trail up and down her arm. It was not enough to kill her, but just enough to make her suffer. His own throat burned as he shouted her name over and over again. Horrified, he watched as she collapsed to the ground. Her arm went slack, and her gun slid across the floor, to the middle of the clearing.

"Now, allow me to pose my ultimatum," Davros cackled. "You will cooperate, Doctor. Or one of your... friends... will die."

"The end of everything... the cold, and the dark," Dalek Caan spat, its tentacles moving about like a root scourging for nutrients. "The Doc-tor is here, here at last, with his Children of Time. And one of them will _still_ die!"

There was a resolute gleam in Martha's eyes, and he knew instantly what she was thinking.

"Well, I'd _rather_ die than be enslaved to you!" she exclaimed.

"No! Martha, _don't!" _

She dove for the gun, but a Dalek laser grazed her leg before her hands could fit around its rubber grip. A cry of agony echoed through the Vault. Another shot disfigured the weapon into steaming metal scrap. Enraged, he slammed his hands against the barrier of his cell and yelled.

"Oh my god, Martha..." Rose gasped, her hands pressed to her mouth in shock. "Doctor, we have to get everyone into the TARDIS! Now!"

"Doctor! I've got a key!" Sarah called. "I can lead them in!"

"Do it!" he prompted. "I'm afraid Rose and I are sitting ducks at the moment." His gaze drifted off into the distance. "If I could only... disable the holding cell..."

Ignoring all the chaos and distractions that burdened his world at this moment- such as Sarah, standing at his ship's door as all of his friends piled in, Jack, who acted as a shield to protect the others from the Dalek's lasers, and River, who was groggy and resilient and pulling an unconscious Martha into the console room- the Doctor observed something interesting about the holding cell. Every time a Dalek laser hit the shimmering blue barrier, it flickered. Energy hitting energy... He readied his screwdriver, curious to see what would happen should he add a bit more energy to the mix.

Just as the next Dalek laser hit, he gave the barrier a good burst of sonic energy. Overwhelmed with all the power surging into the system, it deactivated, leaving him in the middle of a Dalek firing frenzy. He ducked to avoid their shots, and used the same logic to deactivate Rose's holding cell as well. Without even thinking twice, he grabbed her hand, and they ran towards the TARDIS.

"Oh, I feel like I haven't moved more than one meter in years!" she exclaimed, relieved. She yelped when a laser nearly nicked her hair.

The doors of the TARDIS were so close now, everyone inside watching anxiously... His view of them bobbed up and down as he ran faster than he ever had before. Soon, his ship enveloped them, and the Daleks chasing after were outside. They aimed their energy weapons at the time ship now, but her shield was almost impenetrable.

Davros glowered at them, surrounded by his army of bronze Daleks.

"You cannot escape me, Doctor! I will start over. I will find new planets," he yelled, his voice sounding strained._ "And then_... I'll destroy _everything you've ever loved!"_


	8. Not A Copy

_Chapter Eight  
Not A Copy_

The Doctor was certain he left his blue suit crumpled in the corner of the wardrobe the last time he wore it. Yet here it was, waiting on the first rack, almost as if the TARDIS expected he'd need it today. His brows shot above his hairline as he pondered on this. Did the TARDIS expect this? Was this a freak turn of events, or was it something different- something _more_?

His lips turned up. Okay, he couldn't let his mind wander _that_ far… He already had a heap of concerns to fuss over, anyways. For instance, Donna told him that Rose and Jack were alone on Davros' ship. He knew they were more than equipped to take care of themselves, but he still couldn't help but worry. After all, he let Rose Tyler slip out of his hands once before, and he didn't fancy experiencing that ever again.

Moreover, he carried the fate of trillions from the twenty-seven planets on his shoulders. The longer they waited out here, suspended halfway between the Milky Way and the Medusa Cascade, the more innocents would die at the feet of Davros. They had their reasons for waiting, of course. He always did. Reason, however, never succeeded in surpassing guilt.

And last, he felt obligated to worry about the new Doctor, since he was still within fifteen hours of regeneration. Technically, so was he, but unlike his counterpart he was already familiar with his body. The after-effects of regeneration were easier to cope with when one didn't have to learn how to walk properly again.

* * *

Minutes later, the ancient traveller returned from the wardrobe, and hopped up on the raised dais of the console room. He combed his fingers through his wild brown hair almost as an afterthought. He wasn't patient enough to gel it today, so it fell limp on his forehead. The next Doctor, clad in his old brown pinstriped suit, acknowledged him with a wave of his fingers and a grin.

The Doctor leaned his elbows on the console, his mind spinning at the current circumstances. Hours earlier, the man standing at the console in front of him _was_ him, in every way. But deep in a corner of his consciousness, he knew this wasn't _his_ future self anymore, not really. He was unsure if this reassured him or not.

Donna leaned against the coral pillars, gawking at both of them. He wondered what thoughts were tumbling through her head now. He was already so proud of her, more than she'd ever know. For Donna, watching her friend change into another man before her eyes must have confused and terrified her all at once. Since he knew about the process of regeneration since childhood, he took it for granted. Because of this, he often failed to explain what was happening before it was too late.

_Better work on that, next time... _he thought guiltily, biting at the side of his cheek.

He glanced towards the other side of the console. The new Doctor had long since piloted the TARDIS out of the Time Vortex and into a safe pocket of space where they could rest for a short period. They planned on returning to Dalek controlled Earth soon, but only after his successor's regeneration had settled. Donna argued, of course, explaining how Rose and Jack were now trapped on Davros' ship, surrounded by swarms of Daleks. He wanted to rescue them as much as she did, but a recently regenerated Time Lord was the last thing they wanted the Daleks to get ahold of. So they would wait.

The Time Lord in question was furiously typing into the keyboard, his gaze glued to the view screen. Though it was a stupid complaint, the Doctor was somewhat annoyed that he still wore his suit, instead of taking the time to find something he could be comfortable in. His limbs were too gangly, so he just looked silly.

The Doctor crossed to the other side of the console, his high-top trainers clattering across the metal floor. "Don't you want to change out of that suit, find something more suitable to your personal tastes?" he said, more a thinly veiled suggestion than a question.

"Perhaps later, when I've got more time," the other Doctor muttered, visibly distracted. A long strand of dark brown hair flopped into his face. He brushed it behind his ear.

"You're in a time machine. You've got _all_ the time you need."

His scoffing statement grabbed the future Doctor's attention, who peered at him, realization dawning. "Oh. Ohhhh, I get it now, is that it?" he said, his brow furrowed. "Is that all you want, the suit?"

He nodded furiously. "Yes, and I'd like it back in one piece, if you can manage that. It's my favorite suit."

"I remember," his successor said, gazing wistfully into the distance.

"You're both _bonkers, _you know that?" Donna suddenly exclaimed from behind them. They both swiveled around. She threw out her hands in confusion. "Is this what Time Lords do? Lop a bit off, grow another one? You're like worms!"

"Okay, okay, okay, stop everything!" the Doctor interjected, eyes wide. Obviously, this situation was long due for a clarification. He was definitely _not_ a worm, and perhaps talking through it would help him grasp what had happened to ensure his existence. "You're wearing the suit _I_ was wearing mere minutes ago," he stated, pointing at the other man, "and the last clear memory I have is of regeneration. So that's you. You're the next incarnation!"

The man gave him a thumbs-up paired with a mischievous grin, and then spun around to adjust the stabilizers.

"And then there's me," he continued, beginning to pace, "somehow existing in tandem, but with no sign of paradoxical consequences. And why would that happen? In fact, _how_ would that happen?"

"Look around the TARDIS, and you might notice something missing..."

The Doctor halted as he scrutinized his surroundings. He narrowed his eyes, scanning for anything out-of-place. Nothing jumped out at him yet. He'd slung his overcoat over a pillar at the side of the console room, after returning from the Shadow Proclamation with Donna, and it was _(miraculously)_ still there. All levers, buttons, switches, and controls were accounted for. A few thick shards of glass lay by his feet.

After taking a few moments to consider, the Doctor was left with no more conclusions than he'd started with. "I don't know, it feels like I've missed more than a few-" He stopped in mid sentence, realizing. The glass on the floor. What object made of glass had he kept in the TARDIS for months?

_The bio-receptacle._

"OH! Of course!" he shouted, thumping his head with his hand. "The bio-receptacle! The bio-receptacle with my old hand in it!"

"He touched a _hand,_" Donna said, and scrunched her nose.

"You touched the hand," he repeated, amazed, confused, and curious all at once.

Grimly, the other Doctor nodded. He tugged at the sleeve of the pinstriped suit jacket he still wore. The sleeves appeared too long for his arms.

"I had no other choice, you see... Donna was about to come into contact with it, and I couldn't let her."

"But with all that regenerative energy I poured into it-"

The other Doctor sensed where his mind was leading. His eyes went as wide as saucers, and he excitedly shook his finger at him. "It just needed one touch to activate..."

"And that produced"

"An instantaneous biological meta-crisis!" they said simultaneously, and both laughed, pointing at each other in glee. His successor grinned with boyish enthusiasm. Donna chuckled softly, shaking her head at their antics.

The Doctor lifted his right hand so he could look at it, and wiggled his fingers. He almost couldn't believe how time had turned. This hand's journey was incredible. From the top of a Sycorax ship, to Jack's backpack, and finally the TARDIS, who would have guessed it'd have such a profound impact on his life?

"But that's brilliant!" he gushed. "I grew from my hand. My handy right hand! You see, Donna?" he said, holding it out to her. "This is the first right hand this body had, but it got hacked off in a sword fight. Leader of the Sycorax, Christmas Day..."

"You mentioned that once, I think," she replied, peering closer. "It looks same as it did earlier today, far as I'm concerned."

The future Doctor whirled around, and had to brush a floppy strand of hair away from his eyes again. "That's because it is!" he explained. "He's an exact copy of my last incarnation, down to the tiniest hairs on his head."

Suddenly, the Doctor's expression cooled. A lump formed in his throat.

_A copy. Really?_

He cocked his head slightly to one side. His brow furrowed, and he decided right then and there that he disliked that term. He didn't see himself as a copy. He _was_ the Doctor. From his point of view, he started to regenerate, but woke up on the floor of the TARDIS. Up to that precise moment, he held the same memories as this new Doctor, so how exactly did growing from a severed hand suddenly make him a _copy? _

He scowled, and leaned his hand on the console. The moment it touched, the light in the TARDIS dimmed. From there, everything seemed to shut off at once. The comforting whir of the engines halted, plunging the ship into uneasy silence. The time rotor stopped pulsing. He watched its green glow fade away, until all he saw was a cluster of clear tubes. He jerked his hand away.

_"What?"_

Donna glanced around nervously. "I really hope you did that," she muttered.

"Nope," he replied, popping the p. "I don't think it was me. What about you, Doc-tah?" he said, and whirled around towards his successor. "Did you accidentally press anything?"

"Nothing of importance, no."

She raised a brow. "You two don't seem very certain about that."

"Well, I'm sorry, but that's because we're not," the Doctor said. "I haven't been one hundred percent certain of anything since Shan Shen. To be honest, there's a high chance that the TARDIS's heart has been depleted. Depends on how long she was sitting in that core of pure Zed-Neutrino energy..."

His successor scratched at his cheek, in mid-thought. "Or, there might be a shard of glass lodged in the base of the console from the bio-receptacle! Let me take a peek." The lanky man dove under the console head first, and wriggled on his back. He all but disappeared under thickets of wires and electrical components. They watched as he grabbed a fistful of cables and pushed them aside. A sharp whistle rose up into the air. "Oh, do we got some cowboys in here!"

The Doctor sighed, and wandered towards the nearest pillar. His human friend slung her hands in the pockets of her brown coat, stepped around the console, and joined him.

"Be honest with me," she said. "What's eating at you?"

He glanced at her, his mouth taut. Something in her tone suggested he wasn't going to get away without answering her question. From that moment, he couldn't bear to sustain eye contact.

"You're worried. 'Bout her?"

"Who, Rose?"

She nodded, smiling gently.

His eyes glossed over. "Yeah," he admitted finally. "But I know I shouldn't worry this much. She can look after herself."

_WHAM_.

Without any warning, the entire time ship jolted, as if it hit some sort of gravity pocket. The Doctor fought for something to hold on to as the turbulence almost knocked him off his feet. Unable to keep her balance, Donna collided into him, and both tumbled to the floor in a mess of limbs. His head slammed into the grated metal, and for a short moment the corners of his vision were streaked with white.

Something heavy pressed his foot into the metal floor.

"Ow, ow, Donna, you're leaning on my foot!"

"Guess what? I'm _trying_ to stand up!"

When he could see normally again, Donna was already standing, and extending a hand to help him.

"What the hell was that? We didn't ram into another ship, did we?"

He accepted her help, and hissed as he tried to stand to his feet. An excruciating pain blossomed in his left ankle. "But that can't be possible! We're parked in the middle of nowhere! There isn't a single planet for a hundred thousand clicks. Doctor?" he called. "What's going on under there?"

"Everything's intact in the console," his successor shouted back. "No wires are severed, all the thermo couplings are locked in place. The TARDIS should be running smoothly!"

With a frustrated growl, the Doctor limped to the view screen to check on the action outside. According to the data rotating across the screen, he was right. Nothing for thousands of clicks. Nevertheless, the freak turbulence continued. The lights in the TARDIS shut completely off. A wire swung down and swiped him in the head. He heard a shattering noise, and watched as a massive v-shaped crack split the screen in half.

The TARDIS's stabilizers- the only thing keeping the ship stationary- shut off, leaving them in free fall.


	9. Relative Dimensions In Space

_Chapter Nine  
Relative Dimensions In Space_

The time-traveling trio slowly ambled through the TARDIS's darkened corridors, all of them sopping wet. Water dripped from the creases in their clothes, and left a trail of puddles behind them.

"Good god, why's it so bloody cold in here?" Donna said. "I can practically see my own breath!"

Leading the front of the pack was the older Doctor with the unkept hair and ill-fitting suit, who kept himself busy with his sonic screwdriver. He scanned the air with a short flick of his wrist.

"Seven degrees Celsius is _cold_? Are you insane?" he asked her, appearing shocked at the idea.

"Oi, just you button it! Not all of us in here have abnormally low body temperatures."

The younger Doctor, the one wearing the blue suit and trainers, clung to his humam friend's arm as he walked.

"The TARDIS is basically offline right now, so we should be thankful we even have air to breathe," he replied.

"And that she used her last scraps of power to teleport us to safety," the older Doctor chimed in, and happily jabbed his index finger at her.

Donna rolled her eyes, unconvinced. "_Yeah_. By dumping us into a swimming pool."

"At least it's better than being thrown against the walls of the console room," the younger Doctor pointed out, shrugging.

"Well, I'd rather an airbag. Is there anything like that in here? Do those even exist? I mean, if you've got a acre-wide topiary garden, there's gotta be a gigantic Gallifreyan airbag somewhere, right? Right?"

* * *

Minutes later, the floppy-haired Doctor assumed he reached the doorway that lead into the console room. He wasn't one hundred percent sure, because the aforementioned doorway appeared to be inset into the ceiling. The Time Lord glanced up, and then back down. The corridors were oriented upright, so why wasn't the console room?

"Huh," he muttered, and tapped his chin. "That's rather odd."

Behind him, his younger self struggled to sit against the wall. "The gravitational alignment system must have been knocked offline when the TARDIS crashed," he reasoned.

Donna plopped down next to him. "Is that for artificial gravity?"

"Good thinking, but not exactly. It's what keeps the console room aligned upright when the outer shell is not. She probably landed on her side."

She frowned. "So how do we get out, then? I can't climb. I'm terrible at climbing. I can't even reach the top of one of those kiddie rock walls! I'm just-" she rubbed her forehead wearily- "I just feel so _tired_, right now..."

While they continued to chat, the Doctor dug through his trouser pockets. After tossing a cricket bat, a ball of yarn, a few safety pins, a water pistol, a bag full of unidentified food he bought on some alien planet, and a small handful of coins on the ground, he eventually found a coiled length of rope, attached to a folded grappling hook. He squinted.

_I really 'ought to clean out my pockets if things like this are accumulating in them, _he thought.

He gazed up into the console room again, holding a bundle of rope in his arms. While the time rotor still appeared colorless and dark, it was the most welcome sight he'd seen all day. He grasped the length of rope in one fist, and the hook with his other. Concentrating on a coral pillar a few meters above him, he began to swing the grappling hook, and let it fly.

It hit the pillar, but failed to grip it. The Doctor ducked backwards to avoid the hook as it fell into the corridor.

"What's he doing?" he heard Donna whisper.

"You're gonna climb up there?" the other Doctor asked, his brows shooting over his hairline.

_Other Doctor... Past self... Meta-crisis... Copy... Other incarnation? _He couldn't decide how to refer to him, yet. Oh, well. He'd sort that out later. Much later, in fact. There were too many options to sort through. With his TARDIS currently out of commission, he had more important matters to busy himself with.

He nodded. "Yep!" he exclaimed, and he noticed himself pop the 'p' without thinking, like a small remainder of his last incarnation's personality decided to bubble to the surface as he acclimated. "I'll be able to reboot the TARDIS in there. At least momentarily, long enough for her to rebuild herself."

He threw the grappling hook again, and this time it managed to grip the pillar. To test, he pulled the rope taut.

"Let me give you a boost," his predacessor said, and began to stand.

The Doctor noticed him cringe as he put weight on his left leg. He frowned. That couldn't be good. Even though the TARDIS tried to soften their landing by teleporting them into the swimming pool, the force of acceleration couldn't be stopped. His younger self fell into the pool feet first, straight as a pencil, so he wouldn't be surprised to discover he broke a few bones. And he knew all too well how he felt about admitting to being in pain. One time, when he still traveled with Martha, he'd gotten shot in the arm by a rogue Judoon. Even though Martha was a doctor-in-training, he stubbornly refused to let her check his arm, and claimed it missed him. He'd far rather suffer through it silently than let his friends in on his injuries.

One glance at the younger Time Lord, and he knew he hadn't the strength to do much of anything right now. "You can't lift me by yourself," he said, hoping he'd take the hint. "Maybe Donna could help..."

Donna Noble, still sprawled out by the wall, shook her head. Her eyes were unfocused. "Not now. Sorry. Feelin' dizzy."

The Doctor in the blue suit glanced at her, noticably worried. "You all right?"

"Oh, don't fuss over me, I'm fine. I think I just moved too quickly. Blood rushing to the head, and all, you know?"

Sighing, his younger self turned back towards him. "Time to grab the rope, _Doctor_. Looks like I'm lifting you anyways."

"Really? Even with a broken leg?"

He shot a glare at him, but didn't say anything on the matter.

The Doctor grasped the rope, and stepped on his predacessor's hands. He hissed as he stood up from his crouching position, but managed to boost him up far enough that he could begin climbing. It didn't take long at all for him to clear the opening.

* * *

"How you doing, Donna?" the younger Doctor asked, while carefully sitting on the floor.

She didn't reply. Instead, she stared dazedly into the distance.

"Donna? Donna! Can you hear me?"

She rapidly turned towards him, appearing surprised. "Huh? Sorry, were you talking?"

He frowned, noting with heightened worry how her right pupil was larger than her left pupil. "Yeah... I asked how you were doing."

"Oh. Didn't hear you."

* * *

Above in the console room, the floppy-haired Doctor finally found respite on the back cushion of the jump seat, after climbing up one of the scratchy pillars. He rested for a moment there, and let himself bask in the _oddity_ of this strange turn of events. After all, one didn't receive the opportunity to see a room from a different vantage point everyday. He titled his head. From this orientation, the time rotor and the console looked as if it were a skinny hourglass that grew out of the walls like an alien mushroom. The coral pillars were slippery tentacles...

"Doctor!" his younger incarnation called from below.

He hastily stepped to his feet on the jump seat, trying not to wobble. The console was now at arm's length. He began to mess with wires to make it sound like he'd been busy. "Hold on a tick...!"

"Doctor!" he shouted again, and this time it sounded more urgent. "It's Donna! She's unconscious!"

_"What?"_

"I said she's unconscious!"

"No, no, no, I heard that! I _heard_ that," he mumbled, rubbing his temples. "What do you think happened?"

"My best guess? Head trauma. There's a bit of blood matted in her hair on the back of her head, but I can't find the wound. She needs bandages, quickly!"

Taking in this grim news, the Doctor got right to work. He dug through the underside of the console, stripping aside wires and fiber optics. He knew what he was searching for- he could picture it in his mind- so it didn't take long before he located the small, fat lever among the mechanisms and wires of the console underbelly. He brushed his hand over it.

He'd never used the TARDIS reboot before. Theoretically, in a pinch it produced a small burst of energy that jolted the ship's systems online and reset the console room to factory settings. He imagined the console room overhaul might be a little jaring, even for a Time Lord.

"Close your eyes down there, this might be a bit nauseating..."


End file.
